“I considered it. I wanted you to enjoy your night. You earned it. I was told she’d wait until today to talk to you. But when everything happened at the ceremony, she saw her chance.”
“And wasted no time.” Ralston hums with disapproval. “It was always going to be me at the end of the day, wasn’t it?”
Dean Carlyle sighs. “Look, we both know if anyone should’ve been held accountable, it’s me. But neither of us are foolish enough to pretend it’s that simple. The university would never survive a scandal of that magnitude. Not from the Carlyle line. You’ll be fine, Althea, you know that. People aren’t going to take the word of some jealous women.”
“Yes, that was what you taught me, wasn’t it? In all your self-aggrandizement, you failed to mention thatI’mthe one who savedyouin the beginning. Remember that? That little plagiarism scandal could’ve sunk you, not to mention the sexual harassment. If I hadn’t vouched for you and ruined that girl?—”
“And haven’t I rewarded you for it?”
A cold wave of nausea crests in my stomach.
“Not enough. Not if I go down for whatyoutaught me to do.”
“I stole one novel. You stole dozens,” he says.
“You slept with your students.”
I feel sick, dizzy. This is so much bigger than Ralston. Professor Bell was right. Dean Carlyle is…worse, somehow. Ralston shielded him.Learned from him.And he helped her grow into what she is today.
They protected each other.
Two vultures circling the carcasses they planned to ravage.
“Those allegations were never proven,” he says, matter-of-factly. “And they won’t be. Those girls are long gone, and they know better than to come back.”
“And what about mine? What about the skeletons that have escaped my closet?”
“You know as well as I do how to pick them,” he says, lowering his voice, as if this might be the worst thing he’s said. “You choose the ones they’ll never listen to.”
I have to wonder now if Ralston was always this person, or if the dean first taught her everything she knows. I wonder if she thought she’d always be protected—even as a sheep—so long as she walked among the leopards.
“You’ll be fine, Althea. Write a new book. Go on vacation. Let the voices quiet down when they realize they can’t reach you. You’ll be back out there before you know it.”
So that’s it. Like I suspected, she’s not even being punished for the theft, only for the fact that it became too public. The university doesn’t care about her crimes, only that they’ve become a crack in their shining vase. They’re patching over her with a smile as if she never existed.
I grip the wall behind me, trying not to scream. Years of fighting. Years of betrayals. And at the end of the day, it all folds into this brutal truth. The system protects itself, and those who expose its rot become the sacrificial lambs.
Friend or foe, if they need a scapegoat, they will always choose someone from the bottom rung.
We didn’t win. We just took out the person a step ahead of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When my flight lands, there’s an email from Jade waiting. She asks me to call her. Once I’m home and standing in the kitchen of my apartment, I finally do.
“How are you holding up?” she asks, her voice quiet, almost brittle.
“I’m…well, I’m glad to be home, I guess. I can’t imagine ever coming back to Havenport.”
She lets out a breath. “Yeah. Coming back to work hasn’t exactly been easy. Am I crazy for still being here? I just keep waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell me to go.”
“I don’t blame you for wanting better for your family. But look, I overheard something in Ralston’s office before I left. I didn’t understand all the details, but what I do know is it’s worse than we thought.” She’s quiet while I tell her about the conversation.
When I’m done, her voice shakes. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah. Look, I don’t regret what we did, okay? Ralston was a symptom of a much bigger problem. But that problem is still there. You need to get yourself out. Get far away from Havenport as soon as you can.”
“I never should’ve trusted her again. I’m sorry, Lila. I knew who she was, what she was capable of, and I still let her use me to hurt you.”
